Basu: Like Columbine shooters, bombers felt like outsiders

Apr. 23, 2013

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“I wonder now, sir, whether I believed at all in the firmness of the foundations of the new life I was attempting to construct for myself in New York. Certainly I wanted to believe; at least I wanted not to disbelieve with such an intensity that I prevented myself as much as possible from making the obvious connection between the crumbling of the world around me and the impending destruction of my personal American dream.”

In the gripping 2007 novel, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” a Pakistani-born, Princeton-educated protagonist chronicles his growing disaffection with the fast track financial-sector life he worked so hard to achieve in America.

Uncannily, in light of last week’s Boston Marathon bombings, the movie of Mohsin Hamid’s book is slated to open Friday. The story about a gifted young Muslim immigrant with a promising future getting radicalized in post 9/11 America may not explain why two Chechen brothers living American lives might resort to such violence. But it offers clues on how the overlay of personal alienation, political events and false notions about defending religion could cause the careful foundations of a life to break dangerously down.

Those who knew Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the 19-year-old suspect in custody, cannot reconcile their image of the soft-eyed young man not old enough to legally drink with that of a bomber setting down a backpack of explosives to kill and maim innocent strangers. He’s described as a typical American teenager, even a partier, polite, friendly and well-spoken.

A girl who had a high school crush on him asks, “How could you not?” A fellow college student called him “as American as I am.” He was not religious, people say, though he has reportedly told officials he and his brother set the bombs for religious reasons. A student at his college who invited him to join the Muslim Students Association said Dzhokhar wasn’t interested.

How does it add up?

In a way, all of us first-generation Americans have to learn a fluency in two or more worlds. But usually, that’s an asset. It expands horizons and makes people flexible. Out of that cross-fertilization come brilliant authors, entrepreneurs, heart surgeons and tech gurus. But very occasionally when, despite their elite educations, people are unhappy or unsuccessful, some look for external reasons to place blame. And once in a while, it becomes a perfect storm of internalized rejection, alienation from the adopted homeland, and guilt toward the one left behind, to which they assume a false sense of belonging. It isn’t hard to find a narrative of subjugation — about a rich and powerful America insulated from the fallout of its bombs or foreign policy decisions.

Whatever the seeds of their frustration, a few people embrace outrage. Maybe they experienced anti-Muslim discrimination, compounding their belief that America is at war with Muslims. It doesn’t help that the U.S. is engaged in two wars with Muslim countries, or that Palestine remains under Israeli occupation.

Most Muslims don’t react this way, and such actions are condemned by Muslim organizations. When it does happen, often after a personality shift, experts say it is linked to a sense of humiliation and some cataclysmic personal event: a job loss, a death, a home foreclosure. We saw that in Faisal Shahzad, the American MBA financial analyst who tried to blow up Times Square; in Nidal Malik Hasan, the American-born Army psychiatrist of Palestinian origin accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in Texas; in Najibullah Zazi, 24, the Afghan-American who plotted to blow up the New York subway.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, said he had no friends in America. He underwent major change a few years ago, getting involved in religious politics. After six months in Russia, Chechnya and Dagestan, he reportedly began posting Jihad videos. He enforced a conservative social code on his younger siblings and fought with an uncle he called an infidel. A friend of his American wife’s called the wife, who converted to Islam, an “all-American girl who was brainwashed by her super-religious husband.” Some have suggested his younger brother, Dzhokhar, was brainwashed too.

The deaths of 8-year-old Martin Richard; Lu Lingzi, 23, and Krystle Campbell, 29, at the marathon are heartbreaking, as is that of MIT police officer Sean Collier, 26. The multiple loss of limbs is unfathomably awful.

But the image of what could be a misguided, clueless or dominated 19-year-old lying bleeding in a boat, possibly trying to shoot himself in the mouth before police nabbed him, is also achingly sad — especially when the efforts being expended to keep him alive could result in his being put death, if convicted.

In the wake of the bombings, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley is challenging immigration reform, though there is little connection. The Tsarnaevs were granted political asylum because of their ties to Chechnya. And the proposed path to legalization for undocumented immigrants would affect primarily Mexicans, and requires background checks and clean records.

In fact, the Tsarnaev brothers’ actions might end up having more in common with the Columbine shooters than the Sept. 11 masterminds: People who felt wronged, went wrong, tried to blame it on something bigger and lashed out, with tragic consequences, at innocent bystanders.